I’ve bandaged up Jimin the best I can and put him into my bed for some much needed rest, locked all the windows and doors, triple-checked all the windows and doors much to my paranoia, forced myself to eat something, puked out the two sandwiches not more than hour later, and I now feel like utter .

I enter the bathroom and flip on the light switch, checking all dark corners of the tiled room before finally closing the door shut. I step towards the sink and turn on the water, finding comfort in the sound of the running tap filling in the empty echoes of the cramped space. I grip both sides of the sink and lean against it, pushing my chin upwards to look into the square mirror.

I definitely do look like , I mentally conclude. My eyes are tired and wide with fear of the strange unknown situation, my cheeks seem sunken and shallow but the lighting in here has never really been that great to be honest, my bangs are droopy and sticking to my sweaty forehead, and my lips are pulled back in a taut grimly line.

“Not a very good look there, V,” I mumble to my reflection.

I manage a small smile, trying to convince myself that everything’s going to be fine and Jin knows what the he’s doing. Speaking of the bastard. I handed Jin his phone nearly two hours ago and I haven’t seen him since. He’s long locked himself up in his room, deep in conversation. I tried listening in on him through the door but the door was thick and I only heard insignificant pieces that I couldn’t piece together. Also, I don’t know if it was just me but was he speaking Chinese at some point or am I losing grasp on my Korean tongue?

I breathe out a long, heavy sigh and slap some water to my face before gathering the bits of sanity I have left and exiting the bathroom, making sure to switch the lights off.

I start walking along the corridor and I find myself stopping in front of my own bedroom. I poke my head in and see Jimin curled up in my bed, all pooped out and leaving drool marks all over my pillows. I mentally take note to wash all my pillow cases after he’s done using my bed.

I make sure to close the door softly, in case he accidentally wakes up.

The door clicks close and I’m left alone in the hallway once more. Leaning against the closed door and staring at the off-white door of Jin’s temporary bedroom for too long seconds, I slowly realise that it’s quiet. Real quiet. It’s either Jin’s finished his many conversations or –

Wait I never did lock the windows in Jin’s room did I?

I tentatively step up to the door and turn the knob. It was locked and a million possible scenarios popped into my head, one scenario shone; a chair being jammed up to the door and Jin lying in a pool of blood on the floor and dirtying up the white carpets…and Baekhyun throwing a complete fit about it. I bang my fists loudly on Jin’s door and scream his name. “Jin! Jin! Open up! Open the up! You better be ing in there or I swear to god–”

There’s a short click and the door snaps open, revealing Jin in all his post-sleep glory and me stumbling forward like an idiot into the room. I bump my shoulder against the door frame in my flurry. “I’m up, I’m up,” he drawls lazily, half-yawning and a hand slipping under his t-shirt to scratch his stomach. “What’s all the ruckus about?”

I take in his bed hair, his fluttering eyelids and tell myself he was just sleeping. He’s fine; he’s not dead, stop freaking out over the smallest things, you .

I stare dumbly at Jin, him disoriented and staring back with the tiniest hint of annoyance in his droopy eyes. Finally, I break myself out of my reverie and shake my head at him. “It’s, um, nothing. It’s fine – I’m fine,” I tell him.

The conversation is done and I’m supposed to be leaving now and let him have his sleep but I can’t seem to move away from the room. It’s lonely outside and I just really need to be with someone – anyone – right now.

Jin rubs the sleep off his eyes and properly takes a look at me. His eyes widen and his lips pull into a frown. I squirm under his scrutinizing gaze, feeling uber self-conscious because, really, we’ve only just clarified how crappy I look like and now we’re this ing close and it is ing –

The bastard brings his hand forth and places it against my cheek.

My squirming stills but my heart beats even faster at his touch and oh my god the corniness of it all and oh my god his hand why is it even there move it the away no one touches the Kim Taehyung without my permission and say-so and it all I am just rambling right now and he probably thinks that I look completely ludicrous right now and is he going to kiss me do I want him to kiss me –

“Taehyung...” he begins in that voice of his ugh, bringing his face even closer to mine.

I pucker my lips and prepare myself. This is it, this. Is. It.

“...are those...tears?” he gapes.

Someone could’ve just slapped me in the face and make me numb to the waves of embarrassment I felt. I had actually closed my eyes in preparation for the supposedly kiss! Like . .

Instinctively, I push him away. He saw it coming though, so he totters backwards at barely an arm’s length away from me. Even if I want him to be a whole ing room away from me right of this moment.

“These aren’t tears!” I splutter, bringing my hand up to my wet face and tasting the liquid. “I washed my face and they’re – they’re–” The liquid was salty. Those were my tears. , did I actually shed tears for that son of a ?

Jin nears me once more and grips my shoulders when I try to run away. I shout obscenities at him and demand him to let me go but he pays me no mind. Instead, he brings a hand up to my face and caresses my dampening cheeks softly. His actions shock me to another stand still. His fingers were wet and he – without even a single hesitation – them. His face is solemn and serious as he pulls his fingers out his mouth. If it were in any other situation, I would be throwing so many dirty puns at him. “Yeah, they’re salty, alright,” he concludes.

I throw him my most stoic, cool face. “What if it was something else? What if it was urine for all you ing care?”

“What kind of person in their right mind would slather their face with urine, Taehyung,” he states matter-of-factly.

“What if it’s actually this really, really obscure beauty trick that I found on the net?” I shoot back.

“Then you’re a daft twit for taking advice from the ing internet so simply – and stop avoiding the question,” he presses, looking straight into my eyes and damn him to hell for making my stomach ing flutter like that. I’m supposed to be over him for ’s sakes. “You’re absolutely not fine,” he says.

“No ing , Jin,” I growl, feeling so drained and helpless and confused all of a sudden. The sudden rush of emotions makes me tear up a bit and Jin looks so worried and sympathetic and “aw poor you” that I want to punch him. What happened to the douche bag who cruelly rejected me on that day? Okay, not so “cruel” more just him saying the usual bull of how “I deserve better” and “he’s too old for me” and “things are pretty complicated for him right now” and all that other fake nonsense after I just executed the most romantic speech in my entire 16 years of living.

Jin doesn’t respond quickly, taking his time to wrench those eyes of his deep into my soul and scour every little crook and ninny of my insides. Which sounds pretty gruesome but intense all the same.

Why must he look at me like that? I want him to stop all this staring and touching here and now, to just hand me a tissue and push me out his temporary room, to be done with it – with this. There’s another part of me that wants him to take me into his arms and whisper sweet nothings into my ears until I fall asleep a happy, love-sick idiot – but I have got to remind myself that that won’t happen. If he does, then he’ll just keep deluding me even more with all these other possibilities of him and me and us. I don’t want that. I want to be done with this – this thing.

 “Are you done?” I croak, trying to sound as cold as possible, when he doesn’t say a word.

Jin scrunches his eyebrows together and bites his bottom lip, eyes flickering away from mine. “No, I’m not, actually,” he says. “We have to talk. Come in.”

“I already am.”

“Then sit your pretty little somewhere on the floor, Tae,” he retorts, closing the door as I walk further into the room.

After much fluttering around, I decide to sit on the huge bed which has been pushed up to a far wall of the room. I crawl onto it and take up one side of it, pulling my knees up to my chest and sidling close to the wall.

Jin followed suit, positioning himself just beside me. “So…” he begins lamely.

I keep mum, waiting for him to continue.

“You must have a lot questions right now,” he says.

“Again, Jin, no ing . I want to strangle you so badly right now.”

“Whoa, calm down,” he replies. “And it’s hyung to you–” he flicks my forehead lightly “–unless you prefer oppa.” He goofily wiggles his eyebrows at me.

My face flushes red and I hit him back for the stupid line. “Just – just tell me what’s going on, Jin,” I tell him.

“Hyung, hyung, hyung,” he mumbles back and I throw him an impatient look which he responds with a petulant pout.

“Alright, Jin-hyung, what the is going on?”

He starts getting serious then. “Well, for starters, that G-Dragon guy?”

“Yeah, the who put the knife to my neck, still remember him.”

A short, forced laugh comes out his lips. “Yeah, I worked for that very .”

I silently will him to continue. I figured as much actually since the wacko referred to Jin as his “right-hand man”. Although, the kiss was a bit uncalled for (albeit it being quite the turn on but that is not the point).

“Like you heard him say, I was his right-hand man, his most trusted person.” He pauses, pulling at his hair again. “I did everything for him. That guy had saved my life so I owed him and he happened to take me under his wing.”

“Wait, what happened specifically?” I cut in. He was being too cryptic.

“I’d rather not say.”

I hesitated before mutely nodding at him to go on.

“I was 16 when I learned how to handle a gun,” he admits and looks at me meaningfully. “And not many months later, I had spilled the blood of what I later realized were innocents.” After a short thought, he adds, “More or less ‘innocent’, I guess.”

Oh my god I have a crush on an assassin.

“I was trained and taught how to handle many, many weapons. I wasn’t a dealer or anything; I was just the killer and the bodyguard. Also, I had the occasional ‘benefits’ to the job.”

. He means . Well finally something to explain that ing kiss.

“But then,” he wavers slightly, looking as if he’s trying so hard to push the bad memories back that I felt like piling him up into my arms, “then G-Dragon had handed me a picture of a sweet little girl.” A small, almost transparent smile lingered on his lips. “She was about 5 and still had her baby teeth. Her hair was tied up in two pig-tails and she was riding a swing, a blue balloon carefully grasped in her hand.” His expression then turns bleak. “That was who he ordered me to kill.”

“…The mothering psychopath,” I growl lowly.

“The people I kill were usually men and other times women, most of which were all adults, young and old. It was a first for a child. And, looking back, I didn’t even question him at all. Maybe I was blind.”

I grew scared. “D-did you?” I stutter.

He ignores me. “It was a huge mansion and it took me a hell of a time to sneak in. The kid’s room was huge – rich kids right? – and it was about night time. Honestly, the security was pretty ty. I crept in through the window – unlocked – and there she was, just a child and not a single thought went through my mind as I brought the–”

“No, stop, I – I changed my mind, I don’t want to hear anymore.”

Ignored, again. “–gun to the sleeping figure. But, weirdly, my hands were shaking and, more importantly, my – my heart was too. I tried to pull the trigger, I really did, but I just couldn’t. I never felt that way before. I’ve killed people so many times you do not want to know how tainted these hands are – how was a child any different? The only other time I ever felt my heart stir like that was when–” his eyes quickly dart at me but he looks away just as quick “–anyways, basically every bone in my body was telling me that this was wrong. The more relevant thing was I realized that you know what? This is stupid.”

“Oh.”

“Killing people is dumb. Violence is dumb. And the petty rivalry between the Kwons and the Lees are childish and dumb and I wanted no part of it any longer.”

“Oh,” I repeat again, my brain at a loss for words.

“I was found out that night. I had stood at that same spot for a tad too long and the kid woke up, started crying for her mother, etc, etc. I did manage to escape the mansion, though. And I’ve been running away from G-Dragon ever since.”

“But he found you.”

“Yeah, that he did.”

“Wow, what a fiasco,” I mutter, shaking my head.

“Yep,” he answers simply, “I’m a bit ed up but I’ve found out that most people are.”

He catches my eye and winks so lecherously, I smack him upside the head. “Shut up,” I grumble. Why the is this douche so confusing. He’s all gloomy in one frame and then flirty in the next. A question itched at the back of my mind. “Wait a second, then what’s Jungkook got to do with all this?” I ask.

“Jungkook was a bit like me, too, but he was young and just starting off, still getting to know the slippery ways of the underworld and still ‘fresh’ in other, simpler words. There was one difference though, Jungkook hated it there. And so when I bailed out, he sort of tagged along. I let him and now G’s using him as bait to lure me in. G-Dragon’s target is me,” he sighs heavily, leaning back against the wall. “But I’ll still save the idiot.”

“And who were you on the phone with just now?” I peer curiously at him.

He grins lopsidedly at me. “You’ll meet him first thing in the morn, baby Tae-Tae.”

“Don’t call me that,” I snap at him but his stupid grin persists.

The clock starts to tick and the silence between us begins to stretch when I opted to open my big, fat mouth again. “Hey, Jin?”

“Hm?” he responds sleepily. “And it’s hyung to you.”

“Um, I know this is super uncalled for and all it’s just–” I take a deep breath and steady my jumping nerves “–I still would bone you even if you did kill people for a living.” I didn’t know what I was thinking or doing and who in their right mind would confess (again) to the guy who already rejected them but I did and I really am quite the fool.

Jin looks down at me and I can’t read the expression in his eyes as he frowns at me and shakes his head. “Tae…”

“No! Listen,” I tell him. “I have tried to get over you okay? And I just can’t. We were doing so good and so well and then you just ended things because it suddenly became serious? I really, really like you, Jin. , I think I might actually lo–”

“Don’t you dare ing say it, Taehyung,” Jin practically snarls and I think he’s afraid of affection and sappy crap and is being a complete wuss about it all. “You don’t know me, you don’t want to know the real me, me killing people was just the tip of the iceberg–!”

“Why are you pushing me away?” I find myself yelling back. “I want to help you, Jin. You look so lost and – and you just need someone to–”

“Need someone to what?” he spits out. “To love me? To actually care for me?”

“Everyone does!” I retaliate.

His eyes soften and a bitter laugh escapes his throat. “You’re too naïve, Tae.”

I bristle and open my mouth to defend myself but he interrupts me, apologizing.

“No, I – I didn’t mean in that way, I meant you’re ing sixteen,” he stresses and I don’t really see the problem here. 

“And you’re a self-righteous ing douchebag of an eighteen year old,” I mimic him. He’s only two ing years older than me. He doesn’t have to act like such a –

“No! Tae...don’t you understand?” Jin says, exasperated. “I – I’m not eighteen.”

My brain short-circuits. “Huh?”

“I’m twenty-one,” he breathes. “Now... do you see? I’m a whole ing five years older than you.”

“But...but...you don’t look it,” I pipe dumbly. And, really, he doesn’t. Sure, Jin’s one of taller seniors in school and he is very mature and all but never have I thought that he’d actually be twenty-ing-one.

“Let’s not put my amazing genes into play,” he mumbles, off-handed. He rakes his fingers through his hair, and he mumbles something else, something so soft, I can’t properly catch the words but I hear “ing” and “fall” and “minor”.

“What did you say?” I press.

He turns his neck, facing me. “I said; I can’t ing believe that I would fall for a minor.”

My heart literally skips a beat, maybe two, maybe I’m dead and I’ve miraculously ended up in heaven or something because is this actually happening?

“I tried stopping myself. But – , Tae–” he tilts his head towards me, his grin charming as and doing things to my guts “–you have a really nice and face and overall personality. Sometimes, I have to physically restrain myself from–”

He breaks off when I climb into his lap, twining my legs around his hips and wrapping my arms around his neck. “You don’t have to,” I say to him in what I hope is a somewhat seductive voice.

Jin seems appropriately shocked at first, but that shock fast disperses into small chuckles which ascend into fits of laughter regarding our current predicament. “Tae, what are you doing?” he guffaws.

I remain stubborn and I don’t move an inch, the exception being which I pull myself closer to his body. “I like you – you like me – you know exactly what I’m doing, hyung,” I drawl, batting my eyelashes at him. I’m not very adept in all this seducing business since the only experience I have is from reading the occasional shoujo* and my ual debut** with Jimin (yes I know shut up), but it seems to do the trick as Jin falls strangely quiet and his eyes drop and I can feel his hands crawling inside my shirt and resting on the skin of my waist.

There’s an idea tickling the back of my mind and it’s absurd and kind of embarrassing but before I get to think it through properly, I find myself blurting: “Or should I say; oppa***?”

He groans, low and gruff, as the words leave my mouth and never have I thought a single word can hold such power over a person. “We shouldn’t do this, Tae,” he rasps, eyes a little dilated and breathing a little erratic. But I can’t be the proper judge because whatever’s he’s going through, I know I’m ten times worse. He’s probably already used to being in such close contact with another being. I, on the other hand, have only had Jimin and the rare makeout or two.

My heart is beating so fast and so loudly that I’m sure he himself can feel and hear it through the thin materials that divide both our chests. My breathing is hard and I don’t even know why it is so. And my eyes just can’t seem to tear away from Jin’s face, his stupid and ridiculously good-looking face. Also, I think my – um – is getting a little too excited if you know what I mean.

“I don’t care.” My voice comes out squeaky and breathless like I just ran a 10k marathon. “I want you.”

He leans forward excruciatingly slow and I angle my head to one side. His hands around my waist tightens and there’s only the touch of his skin against mine and the ghost of his breath against mine and my skin is tingly and everything is just –

“Kiss me, Jin–” but my voice accidentally cracks at the end and Jin blinks his eyes open and everything suddenly stops and he slithers his hands out of my shirt and I sort of want to tear up again because he’s rejecting me again –

Jin notices my fast watering eyes and he wraps his arms around me once more, whispering into my ears. “No, it’s not you, okay, Tae?”

I’m full on blubbering now, tears running down my face and body shaking with every sob and it reminds me of that day when he had rejected me. Except for the fact that it’s now Jin comforting me and not Jimin. “T-then wh-why?” I stammer through my tears.

“We can’t. I can’t, more precisely,” he sighs. “When your voice cracked just now –

“It’s because I’m going through ing puberty?” I snap angrily at him.

“It’s exactly why you’re going through ing puberty, Tae,” he reiterates, eyebrows furrowed and gently pushing me off his chest so that he can look at me properly.

I glare at him through my red, puffy eyes and, damn, I have never been much of a pretty crier.

“You’re young, okay? I don’t want to be a mistake you make just because you can’t control your hormones because I really do like you, okay?” he tries reasoning.

“You won't be a mistake!” I retaliate. “And I really, really, really do like you, too.”

He heaves a sigh and shakes his head. “You don’t,” he says with finality. “I went through the same thing you did and the bastard placed it over my head for years. I don’t want you to go through the same thing. Plus, there’s the fact that you’re a minor and you’re illegal.”

“Are you kidding me? Jin-hyung, you–”

“No, Tae,” he stresses, “we can’t. Even after this whole thing blows over, we just can’t.” He messes up his hair and I have to refrain myself from pouting like a child. “But, for tonight, you can sleep with me.”

“What if I don’t want to sleep with you?” I huff incompetently, crossing my arms over my chest.

“Just sleep with me, Tae.”

With that, he switches off the lights, bundles me up in his arms, pulls the blanket over our heads, and, despite my words, I snuggle closer to Jin’s chest when I hear thunder rolling and ignore Jin’s stupidly smug grin.

A/N: It's long, like super monstrously long. But eh well, I guess it makes up for me suddenly being wiped off the face of the earth for about 5 months. And ohmigod I am so sorry for the ual build-up and them not even kissing but all in due time? I was really scared because I think I was on the verge of writing actual and just no, I am still too young.

Notes: *shoujo is basically girly Japanese manga with lots of cliches and romance and UNICORNS. Okay no, but it's manga that are usually targeted for females, so, to put it simply, there are lots of stereotypical girly

           **when I mean ual debut, I mean he loses his ity (with Jimin, yes)

           ***oppa is used when Korean females address older Korean males they're close with. Also it is used a lot in fanfiction so I had to (and, yes, I know lots of you know this but THERE ARE ones that don't)